Ragnarok Online is three dimensional game with 2d sprites, or characters. The anime inspired graphics and the beautiful sprites give Ragnarok Online a unique graphic style that is so attractive that it has been copied by two other games: Secret of the Solstice and Water Margin Online. Those who wish to play on the new free server must go through a few extra steps which I’ll try to explain here. First, players must create an account at the official site, next download the official client, install it, and patch it completely. After that, download the special Valkarie patch found on the ‘Download’ page, double click but where it says ‘extract to’, change it from its default location to the your Ragnarok Online folder: for example; C:/program files/gravity/Ragnarok Online.

New players in Ragnarok Online start as novices and must chose how to allocate their initial stat points. The 6 stats are: STR, AGI, VIT, INT, DEX, LUC. Your beginning stats are very important and it is vital to know what 1st job class you will chose at level 10 before allocating your stats. There are 6 first job choices; Swordsman, Magician, Archer, Merchant, Thief, and Acolyte. Most people should be able to figure out the proper stat distribution for their class of choice; don’t give your mage any str, don’t give your swordsman any int, etc. If you need help with class builds, there are hundreds of guides available on the internet (check out the Guide section below.) A 7th first job is available, called the Super Novice, but is mostly for bored veterans and can be safely ignored by new players.

Movement and combat in RO are purely point-and-click and like most games, you’ll start out hunting cute woodland creatures and slowly move on to scarier fare like zombies, skeletons, witches, dragons, etc. Interestingly, every character has two levels, a ‘base’ level and a ‘job’ level. By leveling your base level you gain stat points and generally increase your character’s power. Job levels reward you with skill points. Each time players advance to a new job class, their job level will reset to 1 but the base level will stay the same. Players will still keep all the old skills they learned when they make a job advancement. The grind in Ragnarok is rather severe and while dozens of quests have been added over the years, they are not very interesting. Collecting 100 of a single item in exchange for a piece of equipment is tiring.